Poor Portugal. The country’s bonds have borne the brunt of investor frustration over Greece’s failure to reach an accord with private bondholders on writing down the value of their debt. The yield on Portugal’s 10-year bond soared yesterday with investors...

As EU leaders gather for a summit this afternoon in Brussels, people are asking if Europe is stepping back from the precipice and moving into a more chronic phase of the debt crisis. My response is not yet, but we...

Euro zone finance ministers meet in Brussels today and it looks as though they’re certainly listening to one of Italy’s two Marios. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi suggested after the bank’s January meeting that it would be “highly welcome”...

The IMF, which is asking for as much as $1 trillion in funding, may step in to provide the firewall that the euro-zone rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, is struggling to create. But would that be enough to...

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has avoided making public pronouncements about his plans to cut the country's deficit and for structural and labor reform, delegating all that to his ministers. This strategy of saying as little as possible appears to...

Markets will be digesting yesterday’s news from the European Central Bank, which offered a great deal of detail on its unprecedented three-year loans to banks and the outlook for the euro zone. ECB President Mario Draghi said that the record...

There’s no way the euro zone crisis was going to help Europe’s image in the rest of the world. But exactly how much reputational damage has occurred was highlighted in the victory speech given by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney...

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti told Germany’s Die Welt newspaper there will be protests against Germany and the European Central Bank in Italy unless its citizens can see concrete advantages to the spending cuts and reforms his government is implementing....

So much for having a currency outside the euro. Hungary sold just three quarters of the one-year Treasury bills it planned to today and the average yield rose to 9.96 percent. That’s an increase of more than 200 basis points...

Okay, admittedly not many people think so. But, one might be forgiven for thinking that a corner has been turned with the significant falls in borrowing costs over the past few weeks. Today, Portugal’s auction of 105-day bills registered a...

About This Blog

Financial markets are on the edge as investors await a solution to the European debt crisis. This blog examines the banks that hold billions of euros worth of Greek, Italian, and other sovereign debt; the governments that must pay off or refinance that debt; and the implications for the worldwide financial system if they can't.

Analyses or commentary in this blog are the views of the author and or commentators, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bloomberg News.